Kurt Vile erodes the fuck out of some present participles on new LP, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, because he’s just that chill!

I don’t picture Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile “announcing” stuff so much as I picture him just kind of… yawning stuff out… over a shitty connection on speaker phone… from his seat on the toilet. So, I guess just picture all of that when I tell you (that Pitchfork told me) that Vile is ever-so-passively “back on the scene” with a new album due April 9 for Matador. The new one, which follows up the full-length yawn of 2011’s Smoke Ring for my Halo (TMT Review), is titled Wakin on a Pretty Daze.

Below, you can check out the new album’s opening track, “Wakin on a Pretty Day” (yeah), as well as some visuals from a short documentary that was made about the album’s cover art. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I bet there’s some guitar noodling on it, if you’re into noodles. Oh, and he’s also hitting the road this spring (with stops at big-ass fests like Primavera and Coachella) with the likes of The Fresh & Onlys and Angel Olsen. Damn, is it just me, or does this guy get more done from the toilet than I do in an entire year?

Call me old-fashioned, but when I think Saddle Creek Records, I think of Cursive and other bands that are friends with Cursive. Really, call me old-fashioned for that view, as it’s woefully out-of-date. For years now, Saddle Creek’s been operating outside of their original Omaha-centric wheelhouse. I mean, they signed The Rural Alberta Advantage, a band from a country that doesn’t even have an Omaha! Portland’s The Thermals are also not from Omaha, mostly because they’re from Portland. They’ve also got a new record, Desperate Ground, coming out April 16 through Saddle Creek.

While, as we have established, The Thermals are not from Omaha, they do share a long relationship of friendship with Saddle Creek. The Faint have been known to sleep on Thermals frontman Hutch Harris’s floor. Way back in 1999, Harris and bassist Kathy Foster organized the first Bright Eyes show in Portland.

Desperate Ground was produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Kurt Vile, dozens and dozens of others) in Hoboken, New Jersey, a job which was completed mere hours before Hurricane Sandy hit the state. According to the band, lyrically the record is “a brash and irresponsible ode to human violence, a black celebration of the inevitability of war and death.” Sounds fun! And, since it’s a Thermals record, it probably will be fun.

Desperate Ground tracklist:

01. Born to Kill
02. You Will Be Free
03. The Sunset
04. I Go Alone
05. The Sword by My Side
06. You Will Find Me
07. Faces Stay with Me
08. The Howl of the Winds
09. Where I Stand
10. Our Love Survives

“You’ve got to give credit where it’s due,” nine out of 10 gymnasts agreed in response to the upcoming split full-length from legendary New-Zealand noise rock trio The Dead C and psych-rock supergroup Rangda. “Splits are tough to pull off,” the gymnasts said, “it takes a lot of flexibility, training, and commitment. This one looks totally awesome.” Several gymnasts went on to offer stories of hilarious mishaps in which some of their less-flexible friends tried to do the splits at parties.

Though neither The Dead C nor Rangda are typically lauded as great gymnasts, the members of each of these groups are notable for their longstanding contributions to experimental rock music, which is sort of similar if you think about it. Here’s what Ba Da Bing Records has to say about them:

Each member’s name carries its own legendary status. Richard Bishop. Ben Chasny. Chris Corsano. Michael Morley. Bruce Russell. Robbie Yeats. Fabricated empires have been built and destroyed by the vast output of any one of these guys.

The Dead C’s half of the split comes in the form of nearly forgotten tracks from the band’s archive, released here for the first time. The songs were previously under consideration for 1989’s Eusa Kills. Rangda’s compositions were recorded in Bloomington, Indiana at Russian Recording. The split is available for pre-order now from Ba Da Bing Records, and is set for release on March 5.

In addition, Rangda are about to start a quick tour of the American West Coast that will lead them up into Canada by the end of February.

Earlier this month, we reported how TMT writer Collin Anderson and his partner Rachel Firak were involved in a serious car accident in New York that left both in intensive care. While Rachel is slowly healing from the accident, Collin was unfortunately unable to recover and passed away last week at 26.

Needless to say, the TMT staff is heartbroken by the news. Collin — writer, musician, and friend — was an integral member of the team: not only did he contribute impeccably clever, soulful reviews with a unique, writerly sensibility, but he was also one of the primary conversationalists behind the scenes, initiating thoughtful discussions about everything from our rating system to our pseudonyms to our usage of neutral pronouns. Talking with Collin about such topics was always a pleasure too, because he was as passionate a reader of TMT as he was a writer. He knew the site intimately, attentive to the details only the most hardcore of readers would notice. In fact, before we officially took Collin on board back in 2009, he astutely guessed in his application that TMT must have an internal message board and a music-sharing system in place, just by noticing how an album that was never reviewed on the site had made it onto one of our year-end lists.

It was clear then, and it is crystal clear now, that Collin always wanted to encourage more music sharing, more exchanging of ideas, more communication in general. It was never about the ego for Collin (he changed his TMT moniker from his real name to unicornmang two years after he was hired, in part to avoid the ego), and it was not even necessarily about “the music,” per se. What drove Collin here and allowed him to so easily befriend anyone he talked to was his desire to facilitate discussion, to encourage us to learn from each other, to use our resources to build a stronger, more vibrant community.

We are honored that Collin chose to share his life with us. His influence on us both individually and as a whole will continue as we go forward, with Collin having permanently infected us with his charming inquisitiveness and the goodness in his heart.

We love you, Collin. RIP.

Today, Tiny Mix Tapes posts Collin’s last review (which was submitted days before the accident) and a tribute mix. We will suspend posting anything else today in remembrance of Collin. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

This is an old story. Originally emanated from a single speck of dust. But it’s worth exorcizing all of your predictions. Urgency is the central thing — bread-breakingly stirring. Sound in print breathes life into an invisible community.

A review constituting a small miracle, like a brick wall over and over, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The paraphernalia of stories untold are tied to his limbs with strips of ribbon. I am still quite actively searching, not recovered.

Missing the mark, to be human. Hitting dead ends is another question. But the termitelike “now” is certain, the only umbrella before the torrent.

It’s miraculous that we still somehow walk away from a pileup in love with the textured thicket of machines. A lot of us have been preparing emotional space for… it’ll remain impossible to say. This complete indeterminacy, somehow more prominent the deeper you dig.

Always familiar but unforeseen, something that’s already there leaves you floored, hungry. Clues to an invisible structure live and die, and you’ll both just sit there. But you know what this sounds like already.

This is where the guts thing comes back. Let’s just cross our fingers in hopes that their brains aren’t as permanently cooked as this fractured narrative. Amoebic diligence past being able to do anything about it — score for the machines. This empty dread when the buzzing naughts are left on too long without feedback.

There’s a strange peace in asking the right questions. Mash-up, alien, or oblivion? There’s a piece of you that will stop. This unnamed “you” plays time like an accordion. To construct something, intent on a cut-and-paste asymptote.

Believing in people is harder than believing in unseen unity. “Infinite reserve of uplifting hurt” loses meaning, leading into nothing in particular. You know what we like to do with serious things. Sing her syllables like Shaker exsufflations.

How damned deliberate, like a hornet struggling for life. We’re talking primordial soup in a panic almost too protracted to witness, the only humanity we’ve had to cling to so far being minutes from vapor. Suddenly a cavernous silence, the type you might imagine before being hit by an oncoming train.

Worm through your day-to-day, then quickly gather dust. Emotional tug will still be there for us when apostles break down walls. Rolling down the windows might well be a therapeutic issue.

Don’t screw around with your certainty. His projected project like another piece of debris more permanent than himself. Otherworldly flotsam. A certain tired humanity filled with some creeping sense that something’s on its way and may never arrive. Cleft mumble, unspoken floors. Apparent silence.

There’s no easy word for how contagious woes punch straight through where they need to. Grief straddles the line between the human and the chemical. We should be thankful he dwelt long enough to make no bones. I don’t know which side of the skull I’m on.

There’s only, it seems, one thing left to love: this solitary, fractured record. A claustrophobic aluminum halo. A brass rubbing of some ineffable, powerful yet stationary force. Sitting in the corner gathering dust, messing with the guts — they do go on forever.

Some days I can stare into smoke for hours. Less an act of investigation and more an act of prayer. The actual visceral experience of one person’s diminution. The world lost a warm and honest person.

Go out the window. Step in the glimmering bear trap. Split your heart, replete. Imperfect until it becomes perfect. No matter how many bizarre directions this relationship takes, it all comes together again on a couch in Syracuse.

He wrote a song about three of my favorite things — swimming pools, drinking, and bad decisions (some people might call them “regrets” but man, that’s a downer) — sloshed his way into our hearts/ears, and now he’s going on a world tour for a while. Okay, so maybe Europe and the US aren’t quite “the world.” But from February 8 to June 29, Kendrick Lamar is gonna own the Northern Hemisphere, as the man has just announced additional tourdates that head straight into the USA.

The new crown prince of Rapland is in Germany and Denmark this weekend, and by the end of the month he’ll be kicking off the US leg of his tour in Gainesville, Florida. The man who gave us “Swimming Pools (Drank)” will be repping his major label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city (TMT Review) at colleges, ballrooms, and awkwardly named festivals (sorry, Kanrocksas) across the lower 48. He’ll also be doing his thang at New York’s Governors Ball music festival in June, along with Kanye, Erykah Badu, The XX, Crystal Castles, Nas, Grizzly Bear, and about a million other representations of music’s finest.

Exciting, of course, is the fact that Balam Acab is collaborating with TMT favorite Marissa Nadler, working on a beat for TMT favorite LE1F, and, eventually, working on new material. But we’re particularly excited to see that he’s releasing a split with Vektroid (@waterfallvoyeur), who TMT went sorta bonkers over last year under her Macintosh Plus and 情報デスクVIRTUAL monikers. It’ll be the first time Vek (who was DJing with Balam Acab in Turntable.fm Wednesday night) will see her music on vinyl.

Meanwhile, Marissa is preparing for a European tour, LE1F just dropped a new mixtape, and you can catch Vektroid in a #rare performance with Magic Fades and S☯LΞ IPSUM at Portland’s SoHiTek tonight. More info here. And more exciting news to be revealed SOON.